Important Decision By The Board Of Immigration Appeals Has Major Implications For DACA

Time To Just End DACA.

The purpose of the Obama Regime’s Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was to encourage more illegal immigration, especially from juveniles. It was also part of a multifaceted campaign to keep illegal aliens in the United States in hopes that more will be around the next time an amnesty is passed. There was also a secret plan to give Lawful Permanent Residence (LPR), a green card, status to the beneficiaries of the program.

That aliens who entered illegally cannot adjust status in the United States, even if married to an American citizen or have U.S. citizen children to petition for them, is well established in law. Such a group of illegal aliens must depart the United States and either return legally in some Non-Immigrant Visa (NIV) status or apply for an Immigrant Visa (IV) overseas, both methods have to contend with the three and 10 year bars to certain illegal aliens with less than a year illegal presence and those with more than a year illegal presence.

The NIV route was definitially precluded because any DACA recipient was presumed to be an intending immigrant and could not therefore qualify for a visa for aliens not intending to live in the United States.

An IV had it’s own problems. Due to the 10 year bar to entry for all DACA recipients, all have been here since childhood and were adults now, they would be required to wait outside the United States for 10 years before they would be admissible with an IV. Waivers of the ten year bar were available, but difficult and expensive to obtain, the Treason Bar charged tens of thousands of dollars for a waiver application, USCIS Form I-601 or 601A. However, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was more than willing to approve most waiver applications it received, so long as the pretense of “extreme hardship” would be imposed on a spouse or child of a U.S. citizen or LPR.

While liberally approved by USCIS, such aliens had to wait almost a year for the approval of a waiver outside the United States as the waiver was part of the IV application process overseas. The Obama Regime created an illegal program to give “provisional” approval of waivers, so the alien had to remain overseas for only a month or so while applying at an embassy or consulate for the IV.

Sadly, the Trump Administration has yet to repeal that extra legal process.

But the real trick the Obama and Biden Regimes used to give LPR to DACA illegal aliens and other illegal aliens was to give them Advanced Parole, a permission to leave the United States and return, erasing their original illegal entry and enabling the DACA and other illegal aliens to adjust status in the United States. The whole program was a fraud. Advanced Parole was originally for aliens adjusting from legal status to LPR, but had to travel overseas for business, as at the time that was considered the only valid reason for an alien to leave the United States while actually legally adjusting status; it was mostly for H-1 and L-1 applicants engaged in international business and required them to travel frequently.

However, the then very much limited Advanced Parole was expanded to every illegal alien in the United States who wanted to adjust status. They could apply to spend one day visiting family they haven’t ever seen, or visit a relative’s grave, or the worst excuse, fake one-day English lessons for Mexican children given by DACA in Mexican border towns, then they return the next day with their Advanced Parole documents.

It was an ongoing amnesty for DACA and other illegal aliens who had applied for LPR status, they avoided the three or 10 year bar because parole was considered to be a legal fiction, meaning that it said they never left the United States, but suddenly had a legal status, an inspection and admission or parole, that would allow them to adjust status in the United States.

The Obama and Biden Regimes used this to make DACA illegal aliens into legal residents by the tens of thousands. It became a big industry, with Treason Bar shysters and Non-Profit Organizations charging thousands in fees and “donations” to participate in fake charity trips to Mexico for one day, or less. All because a departure, then return and being paroled was not legally leaving the United States.

A hole in the law that one could drive busloads of illegal aliens through.

But under the Trump Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), the administrative appeals court for immigration cases that come out of the Executive Office For Immigration Review (EOIR), the immigration courts, has decided that a departure from the United States with Advanced Parole does trigger the three and 10 year bars! This decision is courtesy of appointments to the BIA by former Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The BIA ruled that advance parole travel now triggers unlawful presence bars, overturning a 14-year precedent for travel occurring after August 13, 2026.

The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled Thursday that leaving the United States under advance parole counts as a departure that can trigger the unlawful presence bars. The decision, known as BIA Overrules Arrabally and Yerrabelly, reverses a 14-year-old precedent but applies only to future travel.

In Matter of Delcarmen-Lara, 29 I&N Dec. 830 (BIA 2026), Interim Decision #4233, the Board held that travel under a parole grant falls within INA § 212(a)(9)(B)(i)(II), 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(9)(B)(i)(II). That provision can bar readmission for 10 years after at least one year of unlawful presence, while a separate provision creates a 3-year bar after more than 180 days but less than one year.

BIA Reverses Arrabally and Yerrabelly Decision on Advance Parole Travel Rules, by Nadia Hassan, VisaVerge, August 13, 2026

The decision is not revolutionary, but instead a return to pre-2012 interpretation of the law.

Before Arrabally and Yerrabelly was decided in 2012, the Department of Homeland Security and the former Immigration and Naturalization Service had treated travel under the document as a departure for this inadmissibility ground. Internal policy memoranda reflected that position.

The documents themselves warned travelers that they could be found inadmissible and ineligible for adjustment without a valid waiver. The Board cited that warning, as did the Eleventh Circuit in Cheruku v. U.S. Attorney General.